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Operation Guinevere
For All Nails #322: Operation Guinevere By Johnny Pez ---- :No. 10 Downing Street :London, Great Britain :29 July 1975 Field Marshal the Viscount Cawdor was not a man given to emotional displays, which Sir Geoffrey Gold felt was just as it should be. The Field Marshal was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and if a stolid temperament wasn’t a requisite for such a position, then it jolly well ought to be. So when Sir Geoffrey saw a look of concern on the Field Marshal’s face as he entered the Prime Minister’s office, it set alarm bells ringing in his head. “Is something the matter, Jock?” Sir Geoffrey inquired. The Field Marshal paused for a moment to light his pipe, which was another familiar warning sign. In due course he replied, “I regret to say that it is, Prime Minister.” He opened his briefcase and withdrew a plain folder, handing it over to the Prime Minister. Sir Geoffrey opened the folder with some trepidation. Within it was a photograph, and he had no difficulty recognizing the two people depicted. One was King Ferdinand of New Granada, and the other was his wife, Queen Sophia, the daughter of King Henry X of Great Britain. Two items called themselves to Sir Geoffrey’s attention immediately. First, Sophia was visibly pregnant; and second, Sophia had a cast on her left arm. The Queen’s pregnancy was well known, so it must be the second that the Field Marshal meant him to see. Sir Geoffrey looked up from the photograph. “What’s wrong with Queen Sophia’s arm?” “A fractured ulna suffered during a bombing raid on Bogotá two days ago,” the Field Marshal answered. “Her lady in waiting, Señorita Daisy Fuentes, was killed in the raid. King Ferdinand was uninjured.” There was no need for the Field Marshal to specify which nation had been conducting the bombing raid, of course. The Royal Air Arm had been carrying out bombing missions over Bogotá since March. There was also no need for the Field Marshal to explain the political ramifications of Sophia’s injury. Sophia had been the most popular member of the British Royal Family (though admittedly she’d had little competition). That was one of the reasons Sir Geoffrey had been so pleased to seal his then-alliance with New Granada with a dynastic union between her and King Ferdinand. Now she was married to the head of state of an enemy nation, and doing all too good a job of rallying her new subjects to the fight against the Alliance. None of this had made it into the press here at home, of course, but the Johnnies made entirely too much fuss about both her and her husband, and there were plenty of Britons who read the North American papers. According to the Home Secretary, Lord Sidney, one was more apt to find Sophia’s photograph pasted up on someone’s wall than her father’s, and one saw the initials FIF scrawled on walls throughout London –- a reference to Sophia’s personal motto, “faith in fabulousness.” “I can see where this might pose a problem to the war effort,” Sir Geoffrey said at last. “What do you propose we do about it? I assume that calling off the bombing raids is not an option.” “No,” the Field Marshal said simply. “We believe that the best option would be to send a team to Bogotá to, ah, rescue the Queen from her foreign captors. Once safely back in Britain, we believe she can be persuaded to divorce King Ferdinand.” Sir Geoffrey wasn’t so sure about the latter possibility. Sophia had a reputation for stubbornness that rivaled that of her father. The apple had definitely not fallen far from the tree there. On the other hand, having her back in England and out of the public eye would be a definite improvement. “Are you certain this can be done safely?” Sir Geoffrey asked. “If injuring her in a bombing raid was bad, you can imagine how it would look if she were killed in a commando raid.” “Quite certain, Prime Minister,” the Field Marshal said simply. “Very well then, Jock. See to it.” “Yes, Prime Minister.” ---- :Port of Spain, Trinidad :31 July 1975 :2246 hours “Our sources,” Colonel James Grafton said, “have provided us with reliable intelligence which places the target in Santa María Magdalena Hospital, in Bogotá. However, her injury does not appear to be a serious one, and she may be discharged at any time. Therefore, we must move quickly.” Serjeant Charles Munro found himself agreeing with Grafton. Once this opportunity was gone, they might never get another. Whether Operation Guinevere was worth the attempt was a question that Munro considered to be above his pay grade. The Imperial General Staff had issued its orders, and Munro had obeyed. Within hours, Munro’s team had been airlifted from Bristol to the Caribbean. Now they were receiving their mission briefing. A photo of the target and her husband vanished from the wall in front of them as Grafton’s aide removed the transparency from the briefing room’s overhead projector. In its place, Munro saw an aerial photograph of a multistory building. “This,” Grafton narrated, “is Santa María Magdalena Hospital. Our sources report that Queen Sophia is being held in a private room on the third storey.” Grafton’s aide replaced the aerial photograph with a layout of the third storey, with the Queen’s room marked in red. “Your team will travel to Bogotá in two gyropters that are scheduled to leave in,” Grafton checked his wristwatch, “thirty-eight minutes. ETA at Santa María Magdalena is 0218 hours Bogotá time. Your arrival is timed to coincide with an air strike on the city by elements of the Air Arm, which should draw Don Diego’s attention away from you. Your gyropters will hover over the target building, and your team will lower themselves down a line to the roof. From there, you will proceed down to the third storey, make contact with the target, and bring her with you to the ground storey, and out the northwest entrance.” Grafton’s aide replaced the hospital layout with a map of the area around the hospital building, with a red line connecting the building to a park two blocks away. “Your team will make its way west along Calle 10 to Nariño Park, where it will rendezvous with your transport gyropters and be extracted from Bogotá.” The overhead projector switched off, and Grafton concluded, “Your team will be relying on stealth once it enters the target building, so use of firearms is to be considered a last resort. If the Queen’s captors learn that the target building is under assault, they will almost certainly remove her from it, and our only opportunity will be lost.” After a pause, he said, “Any questions?” There were none. “Very well then. Good luck.” ---- : Bogotá, New Granada :1 August 1975 :0233 hours Up above, the aeromobiles of the Air Arm were indeed keeping Don Diego’s attention focused away from the gyropters as they skimmed over the mountainous terrain of the Cordillera Oriental. Serjeant Munro found that the only slightly worrisome aspect of the mission so far was that they were fifteen minutes overdue for their insertion into the target building. Munro hoped their pilot wasn’t having too much trouble locating it. The Air Arm had been dropping flares to light their way over the blacked-out city, but Munro knew how difficult it could be to navigate by flare when you were using aerial photographs to go by. A sudden streak of light swept past the gyropter, and there was an explosion below. “Bloody hell, that was close!” Thompson exclaimed. “That wasn’t the Dagos,” Chisholm called out. “That was a rocket! That was one of ours! Bloody skyboys are shooting at us!” “Parkinson,” Munro called to the pilot, “radio Flight Command. Tell them –-" Munro was interrupted by another steak of light, and another explosion. This one, however, was directly behind them, a hundred feet in the air. Right where the other gyropter was following them ... Thompson began swearing nonstop. Munro saw the burning wreckage of Foxhound Two tumble into the ground below and behind them while Parkinson yammered into his headset, “Foxhound One to Flight Command! Foxhound One to Flight Command! Stop shooting bloody rockets at us! You just took out Foxhound Two!” A third streak of light passed ahead of them and detonated among the buildings below while Parkinson continued to plead with Flight Command. The pilot paused to listen to an incoming message, then answered, “I’ll ask him. Serjeant, Flight Command want to know if we should abort the mission.” Munro shook his head to clear it, and considered. If they gave up now, they would probably never have another clear shot at rescuing/kidnapping Queen Sophia. And the whole point of sending two gyropters had been to ensure that the mission could continue if they lost one. “Parkinson, tell Flight Command that we will not abort. The mission is go.” ---- : Bogotá, New Granada :1 August 1975 :0256 hours Serjeant Munro slid down the line from Foxhound One as the gyropter hovered above the roof of the target building. There was a strong, gusty wind blowing from the west that made the line shake like, well, like a leaf in a strong gusty wind. His boots made contact with the slate tiles of the roof and he let go of the line, which whipped away to the left, then began to wave back and forth as Chisholm began his descent. Chisholm and Dafydd were safely down when the wind died almost completely away. Thompson was ten feet above the roof when another gust came, stronger than ever, causing the gyropter to heel over and sending the line flying out past the edge of the roof. Parkinson righted the gyropter, and the line flew back over the roof, except for Thompson, who had been flung off a hundred feet above the street. Munro waved Parkinson off, and the sound of the rotors faded as the gyropter flew off to the rendezvous point. In the silence, Munro could hear the sounds of a city under aerial attack: the distant shriek of the venturi, the falling bombs, and the blasting anti-aeromobile guns. A quick scan of the rooftop brought in view the upper entrance of a stairwell on the northeast corner. Munro called out, “This way,” to the two remaining members of his team as he led them through the dark, windy night. The prybar in Dafydd’s pack made short work of the stairwell door, and Munro was soon leading the other two men down the stairs. There were numbers painted on the stairwell walls to let them know when they reached the third storey. The floor plan of the target building’s third storey was of two long corridors connected at intervals by short cross-corridors. A quick recce from the stairwell showed no one present in the immediate area, so Munro led his team quietly along the length of the corridor. They stopped at the first cross-corridor, and Munro gave a quick look around the corner. He was astonished to recognize their target in a pale blue hospital gown; apparently luck was with them for a change. Judging from the coffee mug in her right hand, she must have gone down to the hospital canteen for a cuppa. He motioned his team in place, and when the target turned the corner, she was immediately surrounded. “Your Majesty, you’re coming with us,” Munro said to her. Even as he did so, he found himself alarmed by the many changes in her appearance from the two-day-old photo they had seen at the mission briefing. Queen Sophia’s long, ringletted black hair had been cut short, and instead of the cast on her left arm, she had a recent scalp wound. “Think again, fuckhead,” the Queen responded, and instantly Munro found himself half-blinded by a scalding stream of coffee. The Queen nimbly ducked beneath his outstretched arm and had his service revolver out of its holster. There was the concussive sound of a gunshot at close quarters and a hammer blow to his chest that sent Munro staggering back against the corridor wall. As he felt himself falling to the floor, the last thought to cross his mind was puzzlement that Sophia wasn’t pregnant, and had spoken with a flat Manitoba drawl ... ---- Forward to FAN #323: Family Feud. Forward to 8 August 1975: The Waitress is Practicing Politics. Forward to American War: Ghosts Appear and Fade Away. 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